...faster and faster until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death...

Saturday, December 04, 2004

VDO Guage Repair Project

I spent some time this afternoon looking for a little rattle behind the Dinan 3-Guage panel. I have VDO Cockpit series Oil Pressure, Boost, and Volt guages installed. There was a small but noticable rattle behind the Volt guage.

I removed the panel to discover that the case of the volt guage was cracked all the way around the case right behind the bezel. This is caused by the way these guages are mounted. They drop in from the front of the panel and are held in place by a U shaped bracket. This araingment puts a lot of strain on the bezel and the case right behind the bezel. After 9 years and 80k miles the plastic of the guage cast yeilded to the pressure.

I used super glue to repair the case. It worked well except the fumes from the glue created a bit of haze on the inside of the guage. I also noted that the boost guage is showing small cracks in the same area.

I always considered VDO a quality product but after looking at the design of these guages I'm not so sure. I'm looking at Autometer Ultra-lite or SPA Design for replacement should my super-glue solution not work.